A Tiny Mingei Museum

Johanna Tagada Hoffbeck's practice is built upon a commitment to extending art into daily life and, likewise, to incorporating daily life into artistic practice. In A Tiny Mingei Museum, an imaginary museum, the artist interprets various existing pieces belonging to the Japanese folk art movement known as Mingei and founded by Yanagi Sōetsu (1889 - 1961). She does so through simple collages composed of cutouts of papers on which she applied strokes of black pigment. This series was first initiated to illustrated a selection of Mingei ceramics under the art direction of T.S. Wendelstein for an essay by Charlotte Desborough published in Journal du Thé - Chapter 3. The artist swiftly pursued the series for her personal enjoyment exploring Mingei further and also including sculptures and furnitures.

Johanna Tagada Hoffbeck (b.1990, Strasbourg, France) is a painter and interdisciplinary artist working across London (UK) and rural Alsace (France). Her practice composed of painting, drawing, installation, sculpture, film, photography and writing often conceals ecological messages, rendered in soft and delicate methods. In several of the artist’s projects interaction with the environment and others plays a central role. Solo exhibitions include Épistolaire Imaginaire – Merci at Galerie Jean-Francois Kaiser, and Take Care – きをつけて at Nidi Gallery. In 2014, Johanna founded the positive and collaborative cultural project Poetic Pastel. In 2018, the artist cofounded the publication series Journal du Thé – Contemporary Tea Culture.